Internet Update

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Google Earth - Interactive satellite maps

Google Earth allows you to view global imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. Just type in the address or location, and watch the interactive 3D navigate to that location, zooming in to street level (you can actually see cars on the street). Along with the detailed satellite images, you can pan and zoom, mark locations, and activate layers that show points of interests like banks, schools, restaurants shopping areas and much more. In addition to the standard satellite view, Google Earth also includes a tilt feature that allows you to render the map in a realistic 3D perspective that shows elevations levels. Additional features include on-screen measuring, emailing and printing of map views, personal places and more. Download : Click Here

NASA World Wind - 3D satellite images from NASA

World Wind is an open source project, that lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. It uses Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, as well as several data sources that provide historical and information on storms, fires, floods and other major events, as well as important landmarks with links to additional information on the web. World Wind also includes a full copy of the Blue Marble, a true-color image of the entire Earth as seen on NASA's Earth Observatory. Other data sources include Land Sat 7, SRTM, NASA SVS, MODIS, GLOBE as well as country and US state borders and city names. NASA World Wind also provides imagery of the moon. Even though the program appears similar to Google Earth, it covers a much wider range of data sources, however it is not nearly as user-friendly and requires an in-depth look at the documentation. Download : Click Here

Celestia - 3D space simulator

Celestia is a real-time 3D space simulator that allows to to travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A point and go interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit, just select it with your mouse and click on Go To from the menu. You can also retrieve additional information on the object from web sites, that are linked from the menu. Celestia comes with a demo tour and several pre-selected tours. You can capture views as images and record your travels as movie file as well.
Download : Click Here